This Week’s New Releases: Bob Dylan, The xx, Dave Matthews Band

It’s back-to-school time for the music industry, with a glut of new releases as we settle into September. First up is Bob Dylan with Tempest, a 35th studio album for the enduring songwriter. With a grand total of 107,087,714 scrobbles and a tour in full swing, Dylan’s newest effort should have plenty of spins.

London band The xx release second album Coexist to much fanfare: debut xx won the Mercury Music Prize in 2010, and they’ve accrued 949,107 listeners so far. Coexist‘s first single “Angels” sits at the top of their weekly charts, with 31,240 listeners in the past week.

Also this week, Dave Matthews Band present their eighth album, entitled Away From the World. With all their previous releases gaining at least platinum status, it seems that success is guaranteed for this set of tracks – although their mid-90s hits such as “Crash Into Me” are steadfast at the top of their charts.

Neil Halstead drops his third solo LP Palindrome Hunches this week; a sign that the former Slowdrive singer/songwriter has been keeping busy since his project Mojave 3 went on hiatus. With well over 60,000 listeners on Last.fm, it will certainly be interesting to see what the man deemed as “one of Britain’s most respected songwriters” has brought to the table in the wake of the hiatus.

The Avett Brothers are bringing fans their 7th studio album this week, produced again by the incomparable Rick Rubin. The album, entitled The Carpenter was announced back in July and has since then had fans and music critics alike anxiously awaiting to hear how the direction the band went in with Rubin on 2009’s I And Love And You has progressed after 3 years.

With over 50 million albums sold world wide, rock icons ZZ Top have absolutely nothing left to prove. However, they’re at it again with the release of a brand new record entitled, La Futura. While La Futura is the bands fifteenth studio album, it is their first in nine years and is sure to bring fans the ZZ magic that has captivated them for close to half a century.

As The Presets inch closer to their 10th anniversary, this week they’re drop their 3rd studio album Pacifica. The massive success of the bands last two albums has anticipation for Pacifica as high as can be, and if the bands growing number of 467,121 Last.fm listeners is any evidence of how big the band is getting, then the future certainly looks bright for Australia’s hottest Electronic duo.